During the rushed yearly release on DOD, the producers and the development teams had to come up with reasons why some things had been changed gameplay and storywise when fans asked them some questions from old Sierra Community Q&A topics. I was around when the forums were still up and running, so a few Q&As were copied from the forums and put onto other Spyro message boards.

Chris Wilson Wrote:Dragon Time will not be one of Spyro's abilites in DotD. The Chronicler taught this ability to Spyro for the sole purpose of allowing him to survive the collapse of Mount Malefor. In his most desperate moment, Spyro realized why he had been taught this ability and why he had been summoned - to ride out the storm that was coming.

Chris Wilson Wrote:I just happened upon this tread and thought I'd shed a little light on why Volteer and Cyril did not talk as much as usual. It honestly came down to time and scope. The team had an awful lot of cut scenes that needed to be finished, so we unfortunately had to focus on the scenes that were necessary to tell the story; therefore many of the ancillary moments had to be cut. There were numerous comedic scenes with Sparx, Volteer, etc. that we had planned and in some cases even recorded, but we just didn't have the resources or time to animate them. This is unfortunately the byproduct of making games annually, you don't always have the time you'd ideally like to have, so tough choice had to be made. Hope you enjoyed the game despite this.

On Spyro and Cynder's sudden age-up in Dawn of the Dragon:

Chris Wilson Wrote:Regarding your question, when we began working with the new team at EL, we took the opportunity to explore different looks and "ages" for Spyro and Cynder. We also had to make some changes to allow for the new gameplay features, such as needing larger wings to work with the flight feature and to allow the characters to block with their wings. The team came up with a variety of concepts and we settled on what you see in DotD. We didn't want to change it too much, but it was a good opportunity to allow the characters to grow up a bit (just like many of the fans were growing up too). It was also a good time to make this change given that it was the 10 year anniversarry for the Franchise. Had we made the game with Krome, its difficult to say what would have happened, but I'm sure there would have still been some changes. Since this was the first time Spyro was on the next-generation consoles, we had to update the model to take advantage of the new technology on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

So storywise, Spyro and Cynder were never intended to grow up inside the time crystal to begin with, the age-up in DOTD was just an excuse for the devs and producers to take advantage of the 360 and PS3 graphics at the time. If anyone takes notice, in DOTD, Spyro and Cynder were the same size as they were in TEN, like they never grew up at all.

Cynder's sudden apperance of her jewelry:

Michael Graham Wrote:"Before I explain the return of Cynder's jewelry, I want to take a moment to explain a couple of things. Bare with me... Often times, there are a lot of details about each character that we simply don't have time to explain in the games. Take Malefor for instance:

Why is Malefor evil? Why does he want to destroy everything? Why is it that every bad guy wants to destroy everything? Well, in the case of Malefor, you have to think about what he has been through in order to understand his motives. Maybe destroying the world wasn't always his goal. Maybe being trapped in the prison of Convexity for as long as he was warped his way of thinking.

As much as we'd like to, we don't always have time to explain every detail (though we do think about them). All we can do is skip to the part that is most relevant and hope for the chance to fill in the gaps at a later point. It's always the hardest decision, to decide which scenes stay and which ones need to be removed.

Another thing that we consider is fan fiction. By leaving certain gaps in the narrative, it allows all of you to join us in the creation of this world. Spyro's world is a world built from imagination. We like to give just enough detail to convey the intent of each scene, while leaving enough room to insert twists at later points, whether it is later in the same game or in another game altogether.
Now back to Cynder's jewelry...

Cynder has been through quite a bit. When she was first redeemed, I think her initial reaction was to cast aside everything that reminded her of the past. She was effectively in denial. But over time, she has begun to come to terms with who she is. Wearing the jewelry that she wore while under Malefor's influence is a subtle way for her to learn to face her fears.

Now why does she have them on when she is freed from the crystal? Well it wouldn't make sense to waste a lot of time in a cut scene that shows her putting them back on, so we'll have to consider them to be "magic".

These answers are really interesting. It does explain a lot. It’s a shame the game was rushed, otherwise we could’ve had something. Same with Enter the Dragonfly. Maybe not to an extreme length as EtD, but still.